338 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



even by the simple association of ideas. Suggestion can even be 

 brought to bear upon purely physical phenomena, as, for exam- 

 ple, paralysis. We speak now of subjective burnings, of sug- 

 gested blisters ; and possibly the strange phenomena of stigmatics 

 may have their origin in something of the kind. The suggestions 

 of acts are the most important in this category, because they are 

 what most cause somnambulists to resemble wakeful men, while 

 passing from the domain of sleep into that of waking. They pro- 

 voke the grave question of responsibility. Suggestions of this kind 

 can be relegated to three groups : suggestions made during sleep 

 of acts to be accomplished during sleep ; suggestions made during 

 sleep of acts to be accomplished during the wakeful condition ; 

 and suggestions during the wakeful condition of acts to be ac- 

 complished while awake. Here suggestion appears in its most 

 wonderful manifestations ; for examples are cited of suggestions 

 enduring three months of incubation. Nothing is, without doubt, 

 easier than to suppose a simulation under such circumstances; 

 and our professors of hypnotism do not make efforts enough to 

 invent counter-proofs and traps against imposture. But the num- 

 ber of facts bearing upon the matter is so considerable, and they 

 are verified by so many examples, that a universal deception would 

 be as hard to understand as the fact itself. 



We can give only a bare outline of the facts here and will merely 

 add that the question of suggestion raises many others ; among 

 them that of the relation of hypnotism to hysteria ; that of hyp- 

 notic phases (lethargy, catalepsy, and somnambulism), which are 

 affirmed at Paris and denied at Nancy ; that of the passage from 

 the normal to the suggestive state, and vice versa ; the philosoph- 

 ical questions that are more or less involved in the discussion, 

 such as those of free-will and responsibility, and the question of 

 double personality. 



The fact of sleep may of itself have already suggested the idea 

 of two distinct persons, for we certainly are not the same sleeping 

 and waking. Yet, in sleep, we have recollections from the waking 

 state, and we can remember from sleep when awake. There is, 

 therefore, an essential connection between the two states. There 

 are in natural somnambulism at the same time more and less of 

 analogy with the wakeful condition. In one respect it more re- 

 sembles wakefulness ; for while, in natural sleep, the dream is 

 absolutely incoherent, the somnambulist plays out his dreams; 

 that is, he executes a system of co-ordinated movements having a 

 beginning, a middle, and an end, or a certain coherence. On the 

 other hand, somnambulism is further separated from wakefulness 

 in the fact that the man awake wholly loses the recollection of 

 what the sleeping man has done, while the somnambulist can re- 

 member what he has done in a previous sleei?. There are, then, in 



